The Location
New York’s mid-30s neighborhood used to be a warren of Garment District warehouses and tailor shops, a neighborhood you passed through on the way to Penn Station or Times Square. Lately, however, it’s become one of the city’s hottest hotel opening spots (the Refinery Hotel is just a few doors down from Archer) expanding the footprint of Midtown by a few blocks.

Speaking of blocks, the one on which you will find Archer (W. 38th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues) is quiet, but a quick walk to Bryant Park in one direction and Herald Square in the other. First-time visitors to the city can be at the Empire State Building in a matter of minutes, and the lights of Times Square and Broadway’s theaters are a leisurely 10-minute stroll away.

During construction and opening, the hotel cultivated an air of mystery around its namesake, Archer, a sort of character meant to conjure up the gallivanting jetsetter with an eye for bespoke knickknacks every traveler secretly hopes to be.

There's yet another new hotel coming to Midtown Manhattan and the elements are likely the dullest words we will write today.

The men behind this underwhelming project are the ubiquitous Gene Kaufman and Sam Chang, and it is depressingly located across from Port Authority Bus Terminal and down the street from the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. (Still, though, we'll admit it's a handily central, though not exactly scenic, location).

In a little bit more interesting news, however, Curbed reports that the hotel will rise 35 stories and hold a massive 594 rooms That's definitely one of the most biggest developments we've heard of for a while in this area. We just hope they find a way to jazz it up.

UPDATE: Hyatt went official with the details after our story went up. Scroll to the bottom to keep Andazming.

Yes, yes, yes, YES. Just days after us asking where you liked to Andazm, we discovered Andaz Hotels is working on another location--Munich.

A Twitter follower tipped us off to some renderings of the project. on Friday, which sadly, have been pulled since. Although we did find confirmation elsewhere on the site, that the Feuring design firm will be doing the interiors. The hotel will have 220 rooms and should open in 2017.

While the renderings have since disappeared, we did get another sort of confirmation from Hyatt Hotels' Chief Marketing Officer, John Wallis, who tweeted this to us:

While anxiously awaiting the opening of Sam Nazarian's new SLS New York (coming mid-20132014) we decided to take a quick peek at the site at 444 Park Avenue South.

The Philippe Starck-designed 190-room hotel claims to be "bringing new restaurant and nightlife concepts and an exclusive rooftop experience to bring something truly dynamic, vibrant and timeless to the community." Of course, it's difficult to discern much under all that scaffolding, but it does look like something interesting is going on up on the roof.

When we think of "crowdfunding" we usually associate it with throwing in a few bucks to support our friends' short films or art projects. Lucky, then, that we're not friends with Rodrigo Niño, CEO of New York real-estate company, Prodigy Network, because he's looking to raise $31 million in equity for his company's hotel project: $100,000 at a time.

Prodigy Network actually have a successful track record at this novel approach to hotel development: they previously raised $171 million in $20,000 increments for a mixed-use skyscraper development that is currently under way in Bogotá, Colombia.

Well, it looks like Austin does have room in their hearts—and their wallets—to accommodate the $4.3 million break in development fees for Austin's newest mega-hotel, a 1,003-room Marriott Marquis. The Austin City Council decided on Wednesday that an influx of steady jobs, the reliable hotel tax base, and new lodging (the city is home to several conventions and trade shows, not least of which is the wildly popular South By Southwest) would outweigh the inconveniences of construction.

An article by the Statesman alluded to another major hotel construction project also commencing in Austin, this time by Manchester Financial Group (Grand Del Mar, San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina)—so it looks like Austin will be treated to some dueling convention hotel action over the next few years! The Marriott Marquis' developer, White Lodging Services, however, has an impressive portfolio of 162 various iterations of the Marriott and Hilton brands. So we're not too surprised we learned of their project before Manchester's.